The scent of burning cloth lingered in the wind, even days after the fire. Mira stood silently before the charred remains of her shop. The signboard that once read "Seamstress Mira" now lay broken, half-buried in soot. Ash clung to her boots, but she didn't move. Not yet.
Davina stood beside her, her tiny hand clasped in Mira's. The child's eyes were wide—not in fear, but in resolve. Something had changed in her since the healing. Since the loom.
"Mama," she whispered, "will they come for us again?"
Mira knelt, brushing a lock of hair from Davina's cheek. "We'll be ready this time."
That night, Mira lit no candles. The cellar was dim, lit only by the soft glow of the Heartvine thread coiled in its jar. The loom, though hidden, seemed to pulse faintly in the dark, as if sensing the tension in the air.
Mira worked in silence. She had salvaged what she could—needles, a few untouched spools, the enchanted thimble passed down from her grandmother. Most importantly, she had the loom. And the thread.
She set her fingers to work, not to heal this time—but to hide.
Every stitch she wove was a ward. A concealment glyph. She used the threads of dusk and silence, binding them into a cloak that would hide the loom from prying eyes. With each shuttle pass, she whispered:
"For the unseen, for the unheard,
Let no mark betray my word."
When she tied off the final knot, the loom shimmered and vanished from sight—tucked into a pocket of stillness where only she could find it.
She exhaled.
But peace would not last.
In the northern cities, whispers of a weaver outside the Guild's control had spread. Lord Daemir, embarrassed by his public failure, had called upon the High Spindle Council. They had not been summoned in decades—not since the last Thread War.
At their center sat Matron Elissae, a weaver so powerful she once stitched lightning into banners during the siege of Ydros. She read the reports with cold interest.
"A non-guild weaver accessed Heartvine and awakened an ancient loom," she said, her voice quiet as falling thread. "The balance is shifting."
Lord Daemir bowed low. "She is dangerous, Matron."
Elissae raised an eyebrow. "No. She is awakening. That is worse."
Back in Elanor's Hollow, Mira began to teach in secret. Her first students were quiet women with calloused fingers and tired eyes. Midwives. Bakers. An old carpenter's wife with ink-stained palms.
Mira called them the Circle of Thread.
They met in her cellar, learning the old patterns—not just how to sew, but how to mean each stitch. Love, protection, hope. These were their threads.
Davina sat among them, silent and watchful.
One evening, Mira placed a bundle of dusk-blue thread in her daughter's hands. "Try," she said.
Davina blinked. "What if I make a mistake?"
"Then you'll learn." Mira smiled. "We all began with knots."
The child's hands trembled at first—but as the thread moved through her fingers, something shifted. The air thickened. The loom stirred. A single, glowing glyph appeared in the thread she tied:
Bond.
Mira's breath caught.
Her daughter wasn't just weaving. She was channeling.
Far away, in the echoing halls of the Guild's Spindle Tower, the threads on the loom of prophecy twisted.
A name glowed in the tapestry:
Davina.
The Threadborn had returned.
And this time, she was just a child.
To be continued...